Saturday, 26 October 2013

I have just been reading a book about the philosopher Thomas
Hobbes (Martinich, A.P., Hobbes: A Biography, Cambridge: CUP 1999). This was for
no good wargaming reason, of course, except that I have a passing interest in
the seventeenth century, as some of you may have spotted by now, and that it
was going cheap.

Hobbes, in his own lifetime as well as in ours is a controversial
figure. Accused at various times of being an atheist, a Roman Catholic and a
High Anglican, it is fairly clear that he managed to tweak the tails of much of
the establishment at the time, just not quite enough to get seriously arrested
and damaged.

Now, I imagine that most of you recognised the title as
being from Hobbes’ masterpiece, Leviathan. In this work he develops his
political theory, that if humanity existed in a state of nature, the individual’s
life would be as quoted, viz Nasty, Brutish and Short. Therefore, Hobbes argues, humans club
together, give up their rights to everything and appoint a sovereign to rule
them, proclaim and enforce laws and so on. Thus, no human except the monarch
has any rights, and the monarch can do no wrong because, by definition, the
monarch is the law.

Hobbes, of course, was also the first person to translate
Thucydides into English, and I cannot but suspect that some of Thucydides’
cynicism and worldly-weariness rubbed off on him. According to Hobbes, after
all, the only thing lying between a population and anarchy was the power of the
sovereign.

Hobbes, for all his faults, we not daft, and knew that not
every state had an actual, real, monarch. However, this disturbed his theory
not at all, as all that really matters is that there is a sovereign authority,
be that a King or a republic. This, after all, allowed Hobbes after a decade of
exile in the Royalist cause, to make his peace with the Commonwealth and return
to England in the 1650s. The purpose of the sovereign was to protect those who
covenant with it so to do. A King who cannot do so, through being in exile or
dead, is no longer the sovereign in Hobbes’ view.

The interesting thing about Hobbes, from my point of view,
however, is how much the times he lived through affected his thinking. He was born in 1588, prematurely, he claimed,
because of his mother’s fears about the Spanish Armada, and he died in 1679,
the year of the first exclusion crisis. Thus he lived through a century
(nearly) of dramatic change in the politics of England.

Under Elizabeth, parliament, while a fairly fractious body,
managed to get along with the monarch fairly well, as it did under James I,
mostly. When we come to Charles I, however, things get rather flakier. And this
is where Hobbes’ theory of the supremacy of the sovereign came in. He wrote that
the King could do anything, and that Parliament could not disagree but was
obliged to give the monarch what they needed to do the job of ruling.

A number of others said similar things, including writing
and preaching on the divine right of kings, and were imprisoned by Parliament
for their pains. Hobbes fled to France. Where he fell out with Descartes, but
that is another story.

I think the point I am trying to make here is that the times
affect the thinking of the person. While Hobbes, even before the Civil War, was
in favour of the divine right of the king, and that the sovereign has absolute
power, the Civil War made his thinking even more pointed. Without the sovereign,
anarchy prevails; rightly or wrongly that is what he saw in England after he
fled.

So, now, we come to a more wargaming sort of point. The times
we live in affect how we think and see the world. In previous posts I have
touched upon, for example, the effect of postmodernism on wargaming, and also,
more recently, upon archaeology and the narratives of Roman Britain. Similarly,
I think that our times, of relative stability, wealth and leisure permit
wargaming to occur. Thirdly, of course, the internet facilitates communication,
be that between customers and manufacturers or between wargamers themselves. Wargaming
is a product of, and in its own small way affects those communities, simply by its being.

How, then, does our society affect thinking about wargaming?

Well, in the past here I have considered the ethics of
wargaming and why some people, at least,
regard wargaming as being unpleasant, perhaps, or downright nasty. I will not
repeat the arguments here, but the upshot is that the critics do not appear to
know what they are talking about. At least, I have found no good ethical
objection to wargaming except the ’Yuck!’ factor, which is rarely a good
measure of the actual ethical issue.

Secondly, of course, there is an issue relating to the
general philosophical viewpoints of our world today, one of which is
postmodernism. This is generally seen in the fragmentation of our society norms
and the struggle of our political leaders to create a vision which the
population can accept. On the other hand, while Hobbes would probably be
appalled by the fact, it is a lot more difficult for western leaders to simply
declare war and get on with it. We might regard that as being a good thing.

However, I think there is a downside to this, not because it
means we have fewer interesting wargame material for modern battles, but
because, as with other things in society, wargamers have become more thrill seekers;
I’ve mentioned before that some part of the hobby is always looking for the
fringe, the weird, the obscure. This seems to me to be another manifestation of
our society and its inability to have another look at itself and discover that
it has its own exoticisms, weirdness and interest. This is, of course, the
thought lying behind some of the recent posts on ‘local’ wargames and the
interpretation of Roman activity in Britain.

Finally, of course, this blog is doing the Socratic thing of
asking more questions than its author knows the answer to. But I do hope that
someone out there can at least tell me that I’m wrong.

Saturday, 19 October 2013

Having spectacularly failed to say anything about
Machiavelli’s text last time, I will try a bit harder to focus. Part of the
problem is, as I think I mentioned, that actually Machiavelli has such an
unusual reputation as a political theorist (to put it politely) that there is a
fair bit of undergrowth to clear away before we can actually see the text as a
text, not as something freighted with centuries of interpretation, both
positive and negative.

Anyway, as mentioned, the Art of War is set in a dialogue
form, with a number of humanist friends having invited the well-known mercenary
commander, Fabrizio Colunna to a dinner, and then they sit and talk about
military and political things, as one does under such circumstances.

The first point made is that political and military items
are not independent. This is then followed up in the first book with a
discussion of the difference between mercenary and citizen troops. Colunna is
of the opinion (and we know that Machiavelli was also) that mercenary troops
are dangerous to the state, whether the state is a republic or a monarchy. The
example of Milan is cited, where the state was taken over by the Sforzas, who
were in command of the mercenary forces.

The idea here seems to be that mercenary soldiers have a bad
attitude to the state, as they are mercenaries and do not have a stake in it. The
argument then is that citizen soldiers will behave much better and not try to
take over the state because they are, in fact, citizen of it, and thus have a
greater stake in it.

These citizen soldiers are to be raised by a levy, a yearly
draft, and to practice every once in a while. It is also suggested that to
ensure the safety of the state, the captains of these levies should be moved
around frequently, so they do not build up a following in the militia and
attempt to undermine the state or take it over. The level of paranoia here
might seem to be excessive, but I suppose that, from the point of view of
Florence in the beginning of the sixteenth century it could be accounted for.

As we might expect from Machiavelli and the humanist point
of view, Rome is held up as being the shining exemplar of the republic with successful
armies and a free citizenry. The Romans had a citizen army and used it to the
full. Each year an army was raised and sent out, and the burden, it is claimed,
was not too great as it was done by rotation. And anyway, to serve in the army
was to seek glory.

A lot is made of this point, that army service was not to
gain power, or to acquire loot or money, but to serve, to fight, was to obtain
glory. Glory, in the Art of War, does not seem to be linked to power, although
in fact I suspect that there was a much greater linkage than Machiavelli would
like us to think. After all, craven cowards or unsuccessful generals seldom
came to political power in Rome, or in Sparta, for that matter.

Machiavelli claims that this Roman system broke down in the
Empire, where captains served long term with their troops and those troops,
themselves, became identified with the state as mercenaries, rather than
citizens 9altohugh, of course, they became citizens at the end of their
service, if auxilia). However, even legionaries (who were supposed to be
citizens, after all) came to believe in the power of the military to make
emperors, and did so quite frequently.

I suspect Machiavelli, here, of protesting too loudly, at
least from the humanist point of view. My understanding of Late Republican Rome
was that the armies were dedicated to their leaders, and the leaders took at
least some of their initiative because they needed to keep their troops happy.
Thus Caesar and Pompey both carried out large scale campaigning and annexation
in the Middle East and Gaul simply because they had the armies and needed to do
something with them to obtain glory, money and power within the Roman elite. From this point of view, then, the claims for
the Middle Republic armies and leaders had already broken down before the Civil
Wars of the mid-first century BC.

Be that as it may, Machiavelli then goes on to observe that
the problem with mercenary troops is that the forces they supply are both too
small and too big. They are too small in the sense that a standing army of,
say, six thousand mercenaries is insufficient to fight a battle for real. If a
war breaks out you still have to go out and hire lots more.

On the other hand, a mercenary band of six thousand is too
big, because you cannot pay it; it is simply too expensive. Furthermore, the
other problem, alluded to earlier, is that six thousand heavily armed men, with
their captains, are going to start to produce a political problem, and threaten
the state. The solution, Machiavelli claims, is to keep only few mercenaries in
the strongpoints of the state, and make sure you have a trained citizen
militia. The latter, at least, he argues, in a surprisingly modern move, will
at least keep the youth occupied and out of trouble.

As a wargamer I think I can see that there is a great deal of
potential here for some interesting campaign games. Despite Machiavelli’s
claims, the militia will be ill-trained compared to mercenary troops, but, on
the other hand, there will be a lot more of them and they might (but only
might) be better motivated. A bunch of player characters representing the
various states, mercenary bands factions within the states could create an
interesting and complex situation to run as, say, a club campaign. With enough factions
it could even be located within a single state.

Saturday, 12 October 2013

Niccolo Machiavelli is, probably, one of the most divisive
and derided political philosophers in the Western canon. This is for assorted reasons, but mostly
because his political philosophy is regarded as being without morality, to be a
pure grab for power and, when power has been grabbed, advice as to how to hang
on to it.

Machiavelli has also had the misfortune for his name to be
applied to all sorts of abusive terms. For example, as you probably know, the
term ‘Old Nick’, used of Satan, is supposed to derive from his forename. Similarly,
the expression ‘Machiavellian’ is, of course, derived from him. Any political
manoeuver which is perceived as devious and subtle is thus termed, and so
Machiavelli is condemned by association with such activities.

All of which is really to say that Machiavelli has not been
treated kindly by history or politics, even though some of his works are still
widely read. How relevant they are is really a bit moot, in my view, but they
are still trotted out as a defence of the purely pragmatic approach to
politics. The basis here is that a politician can, in fact, do nothing unless
they are in power. Therefore, the need to seize power and hang onto it is vital
for someone who wants to do the right thing.

I am sure I do not need to remind you of the context in
which Machiavelli wrote. He was born in 1469, and entered the chancery of
Florence in the 1498. He thus had a grandstand view of the Savonarola regime of
democracy (at least, for some meanings for the term) and its collapse.

Of course, the date of Machiavelli’s appointment into the
Florentine government is important for his writings. What we now know, at least
as wargamers, as the Italian Wars were in full swing by the time of his
appointment and, for the Italian states, tightropes were being walked between
independence, client ship and destruction.

Even discounting the external pressures of France, Spain and
the Empire, the Italian states did not do much to help themselves. In fact,
political disunity did as much to aid the (relative) destruction of Italy as,
for example, Celtic disunity did in Gaul and Britain against the Romans of
antiquity.

Which brings on on to another interesting aspect of Machiavelli’s
views, that of the renaissance. Machiavelli was heavily influenced by the
writings of ancient Rome, which were becoming available through the printing
press and humanist work. For example, in around 1503 machiavell obtained a copy
of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and, later in life, composed a tract on the
writings of the Roman historian Livy. This work was published in 1531, four
years after Machiavelli died.

Of course, Machiavelli’s reputation rests mainly on The
Prince, a work which, for a wargamer, is somewhat peripheral and which has
fascinated and horrified generations of people. As wargamers we are probably
more interested in his Art of War. As it is, The Art of War is not widely
discussed (or even printed in full) in modern times. In a sense, this is odd,
as it is one of two works of Machiavelli that were printed in his lifetime,
but, as the note to my abridgement indicates, many of the sections are
technical and of interest only to military historians.

Actually, I cannot think of many military historians who are
interested in Machiavelli, but I suppose that there may be some.

How useful could Machiavelli be to a wargamer anyway? He, as
with so many writers, harks back to the concepts of the Roman legion, of Livy
and Polybius, and as such his ideas tend to the theoretical. He is also notorious for abuse of the system
of mercenaries in his own time, and belief that a citizen militia would be much
more useful. The bloodless battles of which he accuses the mercenary armies
were not, in fact, as bloodless as he claimed, and the armies of Cesare Borgia
which he admired were not citizen armies.

However, Machiavelli believed that war and politics were
entwined, and the Art of War was much read in the seventeenth century as well
as Frederick the Great, Napoleon and von Clausewitz, so it is probably worth us
taking note of what he has to say. We must be aware in our reading, though,
that Machiavelli was not a seriously military man, although he did see some
action in the early 1500’s.

Finally, before diving into the text, it is well to remember
the style of the writing, which is a bit annoying (at least, I find it so). The
book is written as a dialogue, which was a form very much in vogue among
humanists. Indeed, the use of the dialogue style is probably to be related to
the rediscovery of classical texts, such as the (you’ve guessed it) dialogues
of Plato.

The dialogue form can be quite frustrating, but was widely
used into the eighteenth century. For example, David Hume wrote Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion in the late 1700s. One consequence of this has been a lengthy
scholarly wrangle about which, of the characters in the dialogue, represents
Hume’s own view. In terms of the Art of
War I do not think we have a similar problem, at least most of the time,
because we know from other things he wrote that Machiavelli favoured the
militia system and the Roman legion. We may, however, have to be a little
careful about any counter positions which are represented. Straw men, I think,
possibly abound.

I feel like I have written much about Machiavelli, and a bit
about the context of the Art of War, but nothing about the text itself. Next
time I really will put some effort into saying something, at least, about that
text, and what it might mean to use as wargamers.

In the meantime, the text I am going to use can be found in
Kindle format on the ‘Library of Liberty’ website. Make of that what you will…

Saturday, 5 October 2013

I confess to trying to delay the day of writing this post.
Mostly, it is because while I have read the third part of De Re Militari, I did
not sit down and write about it immediately, and hence have forgotten the detail.
However, in the third part, Vegetius starts writing about armies and battles.

Immediately, this is a bit interesting. So far, a lot has
been said about recruits, soldiers and units and their organisation. Now an
army is being discussed. It seems to me that many wargame rules do not manage
this sort of distinction very often. I have written before about the idea of
emergence, and it is what Vegetius seems to be writing about.

Consider some older wargame rules. I do not want to pick on
any specific rules, but some of the older ones start off with the capability of
the individual solider. They then work their way up to a unit, with various
caveats about how units move more slowly than the individual. Very often, the
rules stop there. An army is nothing but the accumulation of a number of units.
It has no particular identity over and above that.

I think that this may lap over into our wargames as well. As
I recall, many of my early wargames were, effectively, battles of units. This
unit may perform heroically, that might run away. There was some sort of
acknowledgement of the fact that, for example, seeing another unit scarper had
a dampening effect on the units around it. But there was no real engagement
with the army as a whole.

An yet, historically, armies do have individual
characteristics. For example, after the battle of Cropredy Bridge, Waller’s
army disintegrated. The battle, to quote, I think, Clarendon ‘brake the heart
of his army’. How could that be, unless the army as a whole could be treated as
a whole?

Anyway, Vegetius prefers smaller, disciplined armies to
larger ones. This is partly because he believes that disciplined troops can
overcome numbers, and partly because smaller forces are easier to keep in
supply. The bitter comment of a Thirty Years war commander sums this up: “Small
armies lose, large armies starve.”

Vegetius spends a fair number of paragraphs describing how
to keep the army in supply and preventing discontent in the ranks. Keep them
fed and occupied, seems to be the message.

The question of movement is then discussed. This raises
interesting questions about mapping. I have read some rather contradictory
things about Roman maps. To start with, I have seen it confidently asserted
that the Romans did not do maps. The closest they had were the itineraries,
which simply listed the distances between the towns, forts, mansios and other
items on a given route. Of course, an
army could use these for some sort of planning of movement, but they naturally
peter out in the frontier territory.

On the other hand I have recently read confident assertions
that military surveyors existed and would have done useful work in mapping
routes, topographical features likely to be useful or awkward to the armies,
and so on. Vegetius says that an army
commander should have an exact description “of the country that is the seat of
war.” Well, yes, of course. That does sound very much like a map.

Various things in the campaign and pre-battle are then
discussed, such as making encampments, determining the ‘sentiment’ of the
troops before an action, and dealing with raw and undisciplined troops. This
latter sounds like something of an admission that, despite the claims made
earlier in the pieces about discipline and smaller numbers of troops, very
often the later Romans landed up with ill-disciplined troops.

Quite a bit follows about how to deploy, which is ‘obvious’,
or at least would be regarded as pre-modern obvious deployment. For example, if
you have more cavalry, deploy on open ground; if not, use rough ground, and so
on. Force to space rations are
discussed, although not named as such; troops should be deployed in deeper
units if the ground is narrow. Cavalry should flank the infantry, heaviest
nearest the foot. There should be a reserve.

The general should be on the right, between the infantry and
cavalry, and he should be able to manoeuver his troops as required. There is a
bit about not letting your left to get surrounded, while the right is less
frequently in danger. The right, of course, is the most honourable side (hence
the presence of the general). How many wargame rules establish that the best
troops should go on the right? I cannot think of any…

Anyway, Vegetius then discusses seven different formations
for the army, including an oblong square, oblique (refusing the left flank),
refusing the right, which is ‘not so good’. Others are advancing both wings, ,
advancing both wings with the gap covered by light foot and archers, advancing
just the right wing (presumably the best troops) to outflank the enemy left,
and securing one flank on terrain.

Vegetius also comments that facilitating flight of the enemy
is a good idea, discusses how to retreat and how to deal with chariots and elephants.
He then leaves us with some general maxims, which reiterate some of the
previous points.

So, a quick canter through De Re Militari. What have I
learnt?

Firstly, that a fair bit of Vegetius’ writing have passed,
consciously or not, into current historiography and, either hence or directly,
into wargame rules. On the whole I have no problem with this, except to observe
that Vegetius was not a general, strictly speaking, and his observations on
earlier armies may be a little suspect, or at least, from my reading of him,
viewed through rose coloured spectacles.

Secondly, that the issues and problems he discuss are not
specific to his times, they do apply more widely, as we see repeatedly in
history. Armies need to be fed, trained and disciplined before they can achieve
anything.

Finally, Vegetius influence may not be as wide as we might
like to think. While he was the main military writer of the medieval period,
that does not seem to mean that his maxims were followed. I have seen it
suggested that his main legacy to medieval warfare was the idea that war could
be conducted in a rational manner. After all, we do not see many legions in the
thirteenth century…